Government hopeful of energizing unelectrified villages by 2017-end

NEW DELHI | March 1: After a little over 5,930 villages getting electrified so far in this fiscal, the government has expressed hope that all the unelectrified villages in the country will be energized by 2017-end.

Coal and Power Minister Piyush Goyal has expressed hope that all the unelectrified villages will be electrified by the end of 2017 and every home will get power by 2018.

The Power Ministry in a statement today said that 305 villages have been electrified across the nation during the last week.

"Out of these electrified villages, 53 villages belong to Odisha, 48 in Jharkhand, 44 in Arunachal Pradesh, 42 in Bihar, 34 in Chhattisgarh, 34 in UP, 25 in Rajasthan, 14 villages in Assam, 10 in Manipur and one in Madhya Pradesh," it said.

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley in his Budget speech yesterday had said that as on April 1, 2015, a total of 18,542 villages were not electrified.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his address to the nation on August 15, 2015 announced that the remaining villages will be electrified within the next 1,000 days.

Modi has earlier asked the Power Ministry to target electrification of around 200 villages every week by holding regular follow ups with the state implementing agencies.